<B>Diamond</B>, I guess the Gaffer <I>is</I> sort of like a pumpkin -- hard and bumpy on the outside, but mushy inside. Sort of. Metaphorically I mean. If you use your imagination. <P>Book Gaffer is most certainly an absentee. He steals the show in virtually every scene in which he appears in the Books. The tame movie Gaffer -- who appears only in the EE, IIRC -- is no comparison, indeed, is an abomination if you consider the source material they had to work with! <P>I would like to have seen him tell off Khamûl at Bag End ("Why? Why's none of my business, or yours."), and all of his best lines are conspicuously missing (whereas recurring dwarf-tossing jokes made the cut - egad). <P>And what about the Widow Rumble? The Gaffer may have been an old salt, but he still had a few moves left in him, by gawd!
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